Dungeons and Dragons Online: behold the power of free

Dungeons and Dragons Online is enjoying a second life in terms of player count …

Dungeons and Dragons Online went live back in 2006, and a number of my friends took part in the beta, enjoying the game immensely. Then the product went live, and they never played again. The reason was simple: the game was $50, the monthly fee was $15, and for many gamers that's a hard sell. Then suddenly, a week or so ago, everyone was playing again. A thread about the game popped up on our forum. Where did this buzz come from? Simple: the game was once again free to play.

You can still buy a subscription, and that comes with a number of benefits, but you can also download the client for free, and play a huge chunk of the game without paying a single cent. We caught up with Fernando Paiz, the Executive Producer of the game, to explore what might be the next big thing in online gaming: not charging.

"We're hitting and exceeding our internal targets, so far we're very happy," he told Ars when we asked how the game has grown since becoming free. "All aspects of our business are growing. Hundreds of thousands of new players in the world are playing for free, with a very high percentage using the store." The internal projections for growth were doubled. Even more surprising, subscriptions have gone up 40 percent since the game has gone free-to-play.

Here's how it works. Anyone can download the client and create a character and start playing. As you level up, you can buy everything from hair dye to new adventures and dungeons using Turbine points, which can be bought with either real money or earned in the game. You can still subscribe, which gets you more character slots and a monthly allotment of Turbine points, as well as some other perks.

A new way to grab players

"It does totally change the rules of the game, but it's very much in the player's favor," Paiz explained. "They get to try the game, not be constrained by a one-week trial, and then decide when they've made the commitment that they're engaged enough that they're ready to spend money." They don't want you to feel that spending money in the store is the only way to play the game. "As you advance, more of the content is for purchase more than it's free. Not that there won't be free content in the higher levels... but still, if you're into the game and you're playing past level five or six, you're going to really start thinking about buying content packs, or saving up Turbine points to buy content packs."

It's fascinating to see this in action. One of my gaming buddies organized a small four-person LAN party to play the game. Everyone had a good time, and better yet, no one had to sign up and give out their credit card to get a group together. They simply downloaded the client, created characters, and started adventuring. A week later, he purchased his first content pack to play with other people he met online. This is someone who would never sign up for a monthly charge, but this business model—in short order—made him get his wallet out. The difference is, it all happened on his terms.

None of this was an accident. Turbine even updated how Dungeons and Dragons Online was delivered in order to make the game more accessible. "The new download technology allows you to get the character generation and the tutorial zone and start playing while the rest is downloading in the background. You can be playing in 30 minutes instead of 4 hours... in order to get to that broader audience we can't abuse them the way the rest of the MMO audience has been abused in the past few years."

What's intriguing is that by removing the $15 a month charge, they've also removed the ceiling on how much consumers are willing to spend. "We have a good chunk of the population that is spending more than $15 a month," Paiz said. "The traditional subscription model can only make X dollars off a player. This kind of removes that cap."

It's hard to get someone to agree to $15 a month until they cancel; it's easier to get them interested in inexpensive quests and small add-on items and classes. Even better is that people want to play this content together, meaning people will buy the content packs in groups.

Free can be a good deal for everyone

"The number one reason people play MMOs is that their friends do. Now it's a lot easier to get your friends in to play with you," Paiz told Ars. The player who downloads the client, makes a character, and never visits the store still has worth to Turbine. That player is going to invite their friends to play, since online games are much more fun with a group. Those players will fill up the servers and help with the in-game economy and quests. There will be new threads on gaming fora, new LAN parties with people trying out the game, and that's going to lead to more people ultimately paying for upper-level quests or introducing players to the game that will.

Many of the barriers to playing an MMO have been removed with D&D. You don't have to sign up for a monthly charge. You don't have to buy any software, and you can have the game up and running in around thirty minutes instead of wrestling with installations and updates and patches. If you want someone to play with, invite a friend.

By giving away the game and much of the content, players are up, more people are subscribing, and the buzz around the game has never been stronger. Will we see this model replicated? More than likely. For now though, Paiz has invited me to jump onto the server to see what all the fuss is about. Why not? I have nothing to lose.

So Turbine are giving people something for free until they are hooked, then start charging. Sounds like drug pushers to me

Hehehe. Only kidding there, although the concept *is* similar and may be problematic for some more addictive players by removing the cap on the amount they can spend. But IMHO it's a move in the right direction.

I remember playing it in the Beta as well (and never played it again after the fact). It's amazing how just 3 years ago I was not at all willing to "pay to play", and now I'm paying for Aion. I guess it's all in the product (and the fact that I can afford it). I really wish that other MMO's would take from this. Just look at Guild Wars. It's really quite possible. I mean I would even rather have microtrans as opposed to a monthly fee. That would make it so I wouldn't have to spend extra money on it if I didn't want to and it would also cut down on gold farmers.

This works for me. I play Guild Wars instead of WoW because of the WoW monthly fee. The only reason I don't play Eve is the monthly fee. The problem with the monthly fee is that some months I don't play at all, and occasionally I'll go for several months without playing. I really don't want to keep paying a monthly fee for something I'm not playing.

I downloaded and tried it; it seemed like a good idea, as I had gotten tired of WoW last year, but still liked the idea of offing a few dozen kobolds recreationally. I was impressed enough with it to throw some cash at Turbine for a few points. It's a nice change from the somewhat overwrought WoW lore. The most impressive thing about it, though, was that it really does feel like D&D. Gear comes more slowly than WoW, there are fewer quests - but the quests that exist are a much bigger deal - and the voice of the DM in instances, believe it or not, really does help with immersion, even if, say, the art direction isn't up to WoW standards. Honestly, it's a much less polished game than WoW ... but I'm glad that Turbine's found a way to keep it alive, as polish doesn't necessarily mean fun.

I played DDO when it was released, and enjoyed it, but eventually moved on to other MMOs over the years. Now that it's free, it 100% no risk, and I don't have that "I haven't played it in weeks, but I'm still paying the monthly fee" guilt that per-month titles can give.

DDO is pertty different from other MMOs like World of Warcraft in that you can play for 15 minutes or several hours. The game faithfully replicates the tabletop, module-based experience by offering individual "instances" where you (or you and your group) are alone in experiencing the individual stories. You don't have to worry about other players ruining your immersion or stealing your objectives.

I'm extremely happy that Turbine released DDO as free to play, since it's always been one of the MMOs that I return to over time. This one has also become one of my current "all time favorites" right now, since I'm not getting enjoyment from other recently released AAA MMO titles.

I noticed while they removed the $15 a month cap on what you can charge people they just created a cap on the max people can spend. After all once I've bought all the content there isn't anything else for me to spend money on.

This seems to me that it forces them to either ensure they are always adding new content. This would seem to have the problem then that it is almost always going to be high level content after all how often am I going to by new low level content.

The other side of the monthly fee seems to need to create addictive grinds where it is me doing the same content for the month.

been playing it lately, and it has some issues based on its d&d legacy (like say clerics cruising, thanks to always available heals and no armor penalty, where wizards sink, no heals unless potions, expensive potions, and no real armor except magic), but the way that anything is instanced outside of the city (guild wars style), and that one can repeat a quest (tho there is a increasing xp penalty) makes it for a nice time killer.

one thing to note is that while they talk a lot about having the level cap at 20, the d&d classic (until d&d4 was released) one have to get hold of tokens to open up 4 more levels past level 4. At first one get the impression that the only way to do that is by buying them, but they can also be found during quests. Still, the found tokens only apply for that character on that server, while a bought one apply for your entire account.

also, there is a favored soul class that acts similarly, and also the drow race, and the eberron unique warforged is so far only available as a for pay option (not sure how this affects game balance in pvp, but then i not care much about pvp outside of fps games anyways).

Free was enough for me to give it a go, and I'm not really a big MMO player. I've always had something against paying $15/month for a game I purchased. It was fun and entertaining and really appreciate the new business model. Giving the power to the players is a great idea. I hope it works out for turbine.

Took 5 weeks for me and my friends to get into it - and get up to lvl 6 - before I decided to purchase an account. And we have more friends coming on soon.

It's a different experience for me from a traditional MMO. Traditionally, it's always been about putting everything you've got into one character to max them out. I have been playing multiples in this game and the experience is a bit different - my rogue has access my cleric doesn't, but my cleric can solo things my rogue could not.

I played in beta too and they have done a very good job of updating the introductory section of the game to get you started off right.

Eve doesn't work on a free model. Notice what DDO is selling, content packs. DDO is arranged as a massively small group or solo online game just like WoW and just like LotRO. Eve on the other hand, generates the vast majority of it's in-game content from players and as such, it cannot be monetized using microtransactions. I read this and think that DDO is the next step in the evolution of theme-park MMOs.

That's pretty easy to see and there's internal metrics in the game industry for this. Average Revenue Per Unique Customer and Average Revenue Per Unique Paying Customer are both used to measure profitability. For WoW ARPUC and ARPUPC are essentially the same at $15/month in North America. For games like DDO and sites like Facebook or Metaplace, ARPUC is significantly less than ARPUPC. As long as ARPUC is > expenses to operate then you'll make money. As the ARPUC and ARPUPC get further apart, it puts more pressure on the company to monetize those that have already paid or figure out new ways to get new customers to pay. As they get closer, it becomes a subscription model. It's not a bad model to do business but it will inevitably drive game design decisions towards an alignment with business needs whereas a subscription model is steadier revenue and allows the game development team to focus on game development and not revenue generation.

Originally posted by Kressilac:It's not a bad model to do business but it will inevitably drive game design decisions towards an alignment with business needs whereas a subscription model is steadier revenue and allows the game development team to focus on game development and not revenue generation.

The dev team shouldn't be the one's planning the monetary strategy for a company and I highly doubt they are. They will likely have some idea of which content they create will do better as pay content and which will need to be free to fill existing gaps, but that seems like something other people would be working on.

DDO is ok. I tried the beta and didn't think much of it. Some friends from back home have been missing playing D&D around a table so we talked about playing DDO for free and using voice chat. We've only managed to all get together once and no one is really all that happy with the interface. A couple of us have lots of experience with WoW and other MMOs and some things just feel clunky. It's free and that's great, but I don't see myself really spending much, if any, money on it. If I decide I really need the ability to make a Warforged or Drow, maybe, but I doubt it.

I really tried to like DDO when it came out. I had high expectations...maybe to high.

My major bitch was that they created a new world to put the game in. I was stoked thinking they might use Forgotten Realms...I was so excited with the idea of going through the Underdark...Waterdeep and seeing Elminster's tower...and so on...maybe a Ravenloft realm add-on in the future..

But no...it was a new world...when the game started, all you got was the port city, and some lame forest area surrounding the city. My heart was broken by this knockoff realm...but now the game is free. I may have to give it another chance.

Originally posted by Pasta Man:I really tried to like DDO when it came out. I had high expectations...maybe to high.

My major bitch was that they created a new world to put the game in. I was stoked thinking they might use Forgotten Realms...I was so excited with the idea of going through the Underdark...Waterdeep and seeing Elminster's tower...and so on...maybe a Ravenloft realm add-on in the future..

But no...it was a new world...when the game started, all you got was the port city, and some lame forest area surrounding the city. My heart was broken by this knockoff realm...but now the game is free. I may have to give it another chance.

I think it would have been much better using Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance myself. Agreed there. Hell Waterdeep has enough content to be a game in and of itself.

It's interesting that right after all the hype, Turbine looks like a genius, but I'll be even more interested to see how it's working a year from now.

So far, so good. The plan does have some sense to it-- according to my economics professor from college a zillion years ago, being able to get from each person the maximum amount he's willing to pay for your product is kinda a "holy grail" in economics-- and it's possible this mechanism may have done it.

Originally posted by Kressilac:It's not a bad model to do business but it will inevitably drive game design decisions towards an alignment with business needs whereas a subscription model is steadier revenue and allows the game development team to focus on game development and not revenue generation.

The dev team shouldn't be the one's planning the monetary strategy for a company and I highly doubt they are. They will likely have some idea of which content they create will do better as pay content and which will need to be free to fill existing gaps, but that seems like something other people would be working on.

[snipped opinion piece]

The problem is that this is not going to be the case. Creating content packs goes back to MUD development where volunteers would create new zones for a MUD. No one wanted to create a zone that players didn't use so there was always this desire to tailor the zone to generate traffic. (usually meaning better loot in the zone) It resulted in Monty Haul syndrome on most MUDS and the same pattern can be seen in every item/level based subscription model MMO today. Even in WoW, mudflation has occured and that happened in a development environment where generating content was not directly tied to a customer purchase. To think that the development team will suddenly be altruistic in its designs in a microtransaction based business model misses the entire point I was making. New zones will be created for the single purpose of generating income for Turbine just as they were to generate traffic in the MUD days. Only this time, there's an even bigger incentive for this behavior, the survival of the game. They've stated as much in their press releases. The free zones are only created to manage expectations of those that are on the cusp of becoming paying customers. (Managing the relationship between ARPUC and ARPUPC.) Think of it as community Goodwill and will only be released when Turbine feels there's a backlash about ready to happen in the community or people start complaining about having to pay for everything.

Don't get me wrong, it's a perfectly valid business model and I am sure DDO will have success but it is not the business model for all future MMOs. In some cases, as is with Eve Online, it simply doesn't work.

New monetization models are key to surviving in the modern MMO landscape; the companies have know this for several years. The "free-to-play, pay-for-stuff" model has been big in Asia forever, but has been a bit slow coming to the west. However, it is here now, particularly in the casual space and for the younger age players. Just look at FreeRealm's business model. The fact that a "hardcore" game like this has embraced this was just a matter of time.

So... how is this different from other free-to-play MMOs, e.g. Runes of Magic? The business model sounds very similar. Is it the level of polish? Is it just the fact that they switched business models? I don't understand why DDO in particular is getting the attention.

I liked RoM for the short time I played it, but then it seemed like they kept nerfing the already horribly obscure rune system in order to get people to buy more things with real cash.

quote:

Originally posted by whquaint:With this new DDO model, I wonder if the richest people will have a best gear and highest levels. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing.

That's the concern for me. If I play through to level 20 and decide I wanna subscribe (or invest in regular cash-shop purchases for mounts or whatever)... am I still gonna be way inferior to the jackasses who spend $70 a month? It would be nice to have some sort of balance between skill and real-world wealth, but I'm not sure exactly how to draw that line. Anyone find a game that gets it just right?

It was a nice game. It had good enough graphics and interesting dungeous, and the instanced combat areas meant getting quickly from place to place and not running for half a hour to get somehwere to find 3 party members bailed on the trip and you;re left finding new members who you have to wait on... It was nice.

We bought 2 copies, as did several good fiends, and we played nightly. ...for about 4 months. The game company had made some strong promises in the beta period like "we'll increase the level cap by 2 every 2 months" and "New contact and dungeous will be added monthly (at LEAST)." After 5 months, still basically the same dungouns, a few bug fixes, and some gimping rounds, and still the lvl 10 cap. We gave up, nothing new to do, and went back to CoH/CoV, which honestly, seemed more fun anyway and which itself had added significant new content in the 5 month interim.

We head after about a year, the cap was still under lvl 14... I hope it's gone up significantly, and LOTS of content was added... Now that it's free, we might give it a shot again, though honestly, we've stopped all MMO gaming for a while and gone back to pen and paper RPG. DND4e is a nice improvement on the old system in may ways, and the technology for maintaining characters, designing maps, and more has made the game play faster and easier on the DM. The canned content is actually really good, and we play 2 nights a month now rotating 3 different campaigns and GMs.

i will say, i play GuildWars now and again idly because it's free. I might play DDO idly as well, even occasionally pay for some content. I do this with Dungeon Runners (a hilarious take on DnD style games in a slightly improved Diablo II style overhead engine.) I also occasionally pay for content for various other "free" games.

Does anyone know if the old DND characters I had 2 years ago would still be there, and if I can use them again, or do i have to start off in training all over again?

@whquaint: Honestly, I would prefer the setup of the richest people having the best gear and highest levels, as then it is a more controlled decision that one can make as to how much money they want to plunk down (based off how strongly they value great gear and higher levels). This, as opposed to those with the best gear being those willing to raid till their eyeballs fall out (which I truly dislike) and those with the highest levels as those willing to spend each evening playing (which I'm not interested in doing).

I think that it favors those with disposable income, yes. But I think that's a known going into this game from how they're pitching it. So to me, in the end, that levels the playing field. I'm all for that.

Originally posted by mathrockbrock:So... how is this different from other free-to-play MMOs, e.g. Runes of Magic? The business model sounds very similar. Is it the level of polish? Is it just the fact that they switched business models? I don't understand why DDO in particular is getting the attention.

I liked RoM for the short time I played it, but then it seemed like they kept nerfing the already horribly obscure rune system in order to get people to buy more things with real cash.

A real world example of exactly what I was talking about. Game design decisions being made in the interest of driving more business to generate more revenue. Subscription based MMOs do the same thing, it's just not as obvious because the revenue connection is not directly attached to gameplay/content.

Turbine even updated how Dungeons and Dragons Online was delivered in order to make the game more accessible. "The new download technology allows you to get the character generation and the tutorial zone and start playing while the rest is downloading in the background. You can be playing in 30 minutes instead of 4 hours... in order to get to that broader audience we can't abuse them the way the rest of the MMO audience has been abused in the past few years."

You mean, just like the WoW trial client? It's true that if/when you upgrade to a paid account you have to then do a full client install of WoW (download it, get a trial disk, friend's disk etc) but the free trial client does this same streaming thing beautifully. So much for this "abuse" hyperbole.

I've played the game from beta and then been a suscriber from the beginning. And I think it's a very good game marred by some very annoying glitches.

First the best: its fighting system, closer to a shoothemup than a typical MMO. It's not just clicking on things and icons, you can make some very elaborated maneuvers, block, dogde, feint, jump, etc. You have to be skillful and clever, not only a fast clicker or a good macro writer.

Then graphics better than average, not so tacky than in WOW for instance. Integrated voice chat is also neat. And at least for me, D&D rules are a plus as I already know them very well having played tabletop since middle seventies.

The glitches are however very annoying. Tiny inventory and even more tiny bank space, lots of running around despite the limited locales and similar. But the worse has always been the lack of players. As it's defintively *not* a solo game, it's a pain. I've always spent more time waiting than gaming even being in a guild.

I've stopped playing due to that but I'll go back if there are more people to play with now.

It's true that if/when you upgrade to a paid account you have to then do a full client install of WoW (download it, get a trial disk, friend's disk etc) but the free trial client does this same streaming thing beautifully. So much for this "abuse" hyperbole.

Originally posted by Cherlindrea:@whquaint: Honestly, I would prefer the setup of the richest people having the best gear and highest levels, as then it is a more controlled decision that one can make as to how much money they want to plunk down (based off how strongly they value great gear and higher levels). This, as opposed to those with the best gear being those willing to raid till their eyeballs fall out (which I truly dislike) and those with the highest levels as those willing to spend each evening playing (which I'm not interested in doing).

I think that it favors those with disposable income, yes. But I think that's a known going into this game from how they're pitching it. So to me, in the end, that levels the playing field. I'm all for that.

Honestly, there are lots of people who feel the exact opposite as you do, and would be very turned off at the idea of someone paying for items. Many items are fawned over simply because they're rare, and are worn as status symbols in their respective games regardless of their usefulness. If these items were available for purchase, it would erode the popularity of the game in the eyes of those hardcore players who are willing to "raid till their eyeballs fall out." Like them or not, those players are the ones who keep games alive, by bringing in new players, buying multiple accounts, keeping it in the news, paying their subscription fees, and buying every add-on they can.

I think Turbine is doing the right, obvious thing in the face of WOW as the industry juggernaut. I expect other MMOs to try to do the same as time goes on.

One could even see how the model might apply to other online content providers such as webjournals or other subscription based models to give it a shot. Microtransactions and minitransactions (for lack of a better word) could make a big come back this way.

Another interesting thing would be if Turbine were able to get the NeverWinter Nights region up. That could bring in a sizeable group of hardcore NWN fans from the AOL days. Some of those folks had been playing on public servers and there had been a fan attempt at rebuilding those maps and building a "bridged" set of servers.

Then if and when you have already put a bunch of hours into it and hit the free trial level cap, you have to actually install the game.

The difference is in this case once you've put a bunch of hours into it, the game is installed and waiting for you.

Which is neat. Both still get you playing in minutes, using impressive streaming technology. Hence "abuse" hyperbole and making it sound like this is amazing new technology is disingenuous. That's all I was trying to say.

Man, if I didn't hate MMORPG gameplay with the fiery intensity of a million suns, I'd be all over this. Unfortunately, grinding for hours on end for free is not more attractive than grinding for hours on end for pay.

But this is great for the MMORPG loving audience. Maybe this will help get D&D Online to challenge WoW.

Originally posted by Cherlindrea:@whquaint: Honestly, I would prefer the setup of the richest people having the best gear and highest levels, as then it is a more controlled decision that one can make as to how much money they want to plunk down (based off how strongly they value great gear and higher levels). This, as opposed to those with the best gear being those willing to raid till their eyeballs fall out (which I truly dislike) and those with the highest levels as those willing to spend each evening playing (which I'm not interested in doing).

I think that it favors those with disposable income, yes. But I think that's a known going into this game from how they're pitching it. So to me, in the end, that levels the playing field. I'm all for that.

Honestly, there are lots of people who feel the exact opposite as you do, and would be very turned off at the idea of someone paying for items. Many items are fawned over simply because they're rare, and are worn as status symbols in their respective games regardless of their usefulness. If these items were available for purchase, it would erode the popularity of the game in the eyes of those hardcore players who are willing to "raid till their eyeballs fall out." Like them or not, those players are the ones who keep games alive, by bringing in new players, buying multiple accounts, keeping it in the news, paying their subscription fees, and buying every add-on they can.

I think that's going to be part of a very careful balancing act on the part of the developers.

Then again, if you look at the "economy" in Diablo II online, there's a bit of the same thing going on. Those with the most time OR the most money can buy the best gear, albeit through auction sites, rather than the developer/publisher getting the money.

The question is whether the perception of unfairness could be a greater harm to the game than the "actual" unfairness due to purchased "uber" items.

Sounds cool if you can get to a decent point in the game for free. I played WoW back in the day but petered out around level 45 or so because I never had the time needed to devote to the game in order to progress nor did I want to spend that much time on it. I had plenty of fun levels 1 to 40-ish but after that all I seemed to do was constantly look for groups unsuccessfully and check my auctions.